PANews reported on August 16 that according to Cointelegraph, Facebook's parent company Meta denied that more than half of the crypto ads on Facebook were scams, saying that the data was outdated and that measures had been taken to address the problem. As part of its 2022 lawsuit, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) claimed in a recent filing with the Federal Court that 58% of the crypto ads it reviewed on Facebook were scams.
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement: "The data in the ACCC claim statement relies on old information from 2018 and comes from a limited data set. Other contact methods are still the main way people are deceived. The ACCC data is unlikely to accurately reflect the current status of our platform. The preliminary analysis mentioned is an allegation in the ACCC claim involving a historical internal study of a small sample of advertisements in 2018; Meta is defending the ACCC's claim and will respond to this allegation in due course. Scammers use every platform they can to constantly adjust their strategies to evade law enforcement. Meta does not want fraud to occur on its platform, and we will continue to work tirelessly to prevent fraud and protect our users."
The company also claimed that Meta would remove individual ads and ban related accounts after receiving complaints; however, it continued to earn revenue from similar ads. Meta said that the company has adopted manual review, automation technology, joined the Australian Online Fraud Code (AOSC), and updated guidelines to ensure advertisers publish legal content. A Meta spokesperson said: "We are currently using and will continue to explore various methods, such as new machine learning technology, to identify content and accounts that violate our policies."